Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Malpighiales > Salicaceae > Populus > Populus nigra

Populus nigra (Lombardy poplar; Lombardy's poplar; black cottonwood; black poplar)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Populus nigra, the black poplar, is a species of cottonwood poplar, the type species of section Aigeiros of the genus Populus, native to Europe, southwest and central Asia, and northwest Africa. It is a medium-sized to large deciduous tree, reaching 20–30 m (rarely 40 m) tall, with a trunk up to 1.5 m diameter, though some old individuals have grown much bigger (more than 3 meters DBH for several trees in France). The leaves are diamond-shaped to triangular, 5–8 cm long and 6–8 cm broad, green on both surfaces. The species is dioecious (male and female flowers on different plants), with flowers in catkins and pollination by wind. The black poplar grows in low-lying areas of moist ground.
View Wikipedia Record: Populus nigra

Infraspecies

Populus nigra f. grandifolia
Populus nigra f. nigra
Populus nigra var. italica
Populus nigra var. nigra
Populus nigra var. sosnowskyi
Populus nigra var. thevestina
Populus nigra var. virginiana

Attributes

Air Quality Improvement [1]  None
Allergen Potential [1]  High
Carbon Capture [1]  Medium
Screening - Summer [2]  Dense
Screening - Winter [2]  Porous
Shade Percentage [1]  80 %
Temperature Reduction [1]  Medium-High
Wind Reduction [1]  Medium
Bloom Period [2]  Early Spring
Drought Tolerance [2]  Low
Edible [3]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Fire Tolerance [2]  High
Flower Type [3]  Dioecious
Frost Free Days [2]  5 months 10 days
Fruit/Seed Begin [2]  Spring
Fruit/Seed End [2]  Spring
Growth Form [2]  Multiple Stem
Growth Period [2]  Spring, Summer
Growth Rate [2]  Rapid
Leaf Type [3]  Deciduous
Lifespan [2]  Perennial
Pollinators [3]  Wind
Propagation [2]  Bare Root, Container, Cutting
Root Depth [2]  32 inches (81 cm)
Scent [3]  The leaf buds, as they swell in the spring, and the young leaves have a pleasing fragrance of balsam; The fragrance is especially pronounced as the leaves unfold;
Seed Spread Rate [2]  None
Shape/Orientation [2]  Columnar
Specific Gravity [5]  0.39
Structure [3]  Tree
Usage [3]  An extract of the shoots can be used as a rooting hormone for all types of cuttings. It is extracted by soaking the chopped up shoots in cold water for a day; A fast growing tree, it is often used to provide a quick screen or windbreak; The cultivar 'Italica' is commonly used for this purpose though it is not a very suitable choice because it has fragile branches and is prone to basal rots which can cause sudden collapse; The cultivar 'Plantierensis' is much more suitable; A resin obtained from the buds is made into a salve and used in home remedies; The bark is used as a cork substitute for floats etc; Wood - very soft, very light, rather woolly in texture, without smell or taste, of low flammability, not durable, easy to work, very resistant to abrasion. Used for lower quality purposes;
Vegetative Spread Rate [2]  Moderate
Flower Color [2]  White
Foliage Color [2]  Green
Fruit Color [2]  White
Height [3]  98 feet (30 m)
Width [3]  66 feet (20 m)
Hardiness Zone Minimum [1]  USDA Zone: 4 Low Temperature: -30 F° (-34.4 C°) → -20 F° (-28.9 C°)
Hardiness Zone Maximum [1]  USDA Zone: 9 Low Temperature: 20 F° (-6.7 C°) → 30 F° (-1.1 C°)
Light Preference [4]  Mixed Sun/Shade
Soil Acidity [4]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [4]  Rich
Soil Moisture [4]  Damp
Water Use [1]  High to Moderate
View Plants For A Future Record : Populus nigra

Protected Areas

Predators

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Cyclocybe cylindracea (Poplar Fieldcap)[8]
Fomes fomentarius (Hoof Fungus)[8]
Melampsora allii-populina[8]
Melampsora laricis-populina[8]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1i-Tree Species v. 4.0, developed by the USDA Forest Service's Northern Research Station and SUNY-ESF using the Horticopia, Inc. plant database.
♦ 2USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
♦ 3Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 4ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 5Forest Inventory and Analysis DB version 5.1, May 4, 2013, U.S. Forest Service
♦ 6Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 7HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 8Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 9Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 10New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0